The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in the Grace Lutheran Chuch's Fellowship Hall. It is open to the public; there is a suggested $5 donation for non-members.

Handley has been quilting since she was a child. Mentored initially by her Grandma, Handley eventually went on to create thousands of quilts. She was awarded California State Champion in 1979, which led to professional status as a quilter and a teacher, and she has had quilts and articles appear in national quilting magazines, according to Hi Desert Quilt Guild.

Handley shared a little of her quilting philosophy in a phone interview Monday.

“I started when I was 11,” she said. “My grandma was always quilting; she had had one of the frames all the time.

“I've probably in my career hand-quilted over 4,000 quilts,” she said, adding, “I just stopped counting at one point.”

To Handley, quilting is far more than a hobby. “It's been my passion my whole life. Its my career, its my vocation. Its carried me through everything that life presents.”

Most quilters, she said, “will do quilts to signify marriages, birth, and deaths.” Handley also quilts to commemorate world events, such as the Challenger tragedy and Sept. 11.

“I have a lot of quilts with political content,” she said, adding that she also has commemorated “a lot of life events.”

Women quilt for a lot of reasons, she said. For example, “it's one thing you can do while you're sitting on a couch waiting for your teenage daughter to come home.”

Handley said she now quilts by machine as well as by hand, but “still the dearest and the sweetest is by hand.

“It's just an insanely passionate thing for me.”

Quilt Guild President Linda Bego describes Handley as “one incredibly generous and talented individual. She's a ball of fire, really a lot of fun” as well as an “extremely entertaining speaker” with an “excellent rapport with her audience. She's remarkable.”

Bego said Handley will discuss her creative process in detail, including bringing along quilts to illustrate.

“It's nice to work with people who have a love and job of creating. It's energizing and inspiring,” she said.

Quilt Guild members run the gamut, in terms of experience, Bego said. “We have everyone from the novice to the very experienced.” Meetings include a show and tell feature in which members bring each other up to date on what they've been up to.

In addition to creativity, the Guild also emphasizes service, according to Bego.

Page 2 of 2 - Bego said the roughly 122 member organization makes around 100 quilts each for the women's shelter, the family resource center and the Navy hospital for wounded warriors in San Diego. “We also do Christmas stockings for all three organizations every year, so its a pretty busy group.”

Sue Handley would probably approve. Quilting, she said, is different from other crafts. “You can send a quilt to other countries to wrap around a baby you'll never hold.”

Hadley is also holding a two-day “charm square” workshop on Sept. 5 and 6. The cost for the workshop is $50 for a two-day workshop. The fee covers an instruction book and some materials, Bego said.